


Five Times Isaac Mendez Touched Micah's Life

by Nope



Series: Five Times Micah [5]
Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-04
Updated: 2007-11-04
Packaged: 2018-10-25 02:07:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10754526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: Exactly what it says on the tin.





	Five Times Isaac Mendez Touched Micah's Life

**1\. Bus**  
  
They didn't have much, but they had each other. That should be enough, shouldn't it? Family, sticking together, working together, getting through together. Sure, they had to scrimp, the last few days of the month always held their own peculiar terror, and Micah never really got the things he deserved, but they got what they needed. Shelter. Food. Family. It was hard, but they got by. And it wasn't all doom and gloom -- look at them now! Three day weekend in New York while D. L. met some people about a new construction project. That was good, right? Right?  
  
Niki didn't like the way her reflection was looking back at her. She shifted in her seat, trying to see the traffic in front of the bus, but the angle wasn't right. The side of the bus blocked half the view and the signpost for the Deveaux gallery obscured the rest. All she could tell was that they hadn't been moving for a while, weren't moving, and it didn't look like they were going to move any time soon.  
  
"I think there's been some kind of accident," said the tiny old woman in front of them for the dozenth time, skeletal arms clutched protectively around her oversized handbag. "Oh, I do hope no one is hurt."  
  
Micah curled up tighter against her and Niki hugged him one-armed, absently toying with his curls. "I don't think we're going to make it to the museum."  
  
"It's okay," he said. "I know it's not your fault."  
  
"I'm sure we can come back while the Kensei exhibition is still on," Niki offered. "It -- It might take a bit, but."  
  
"Mom." Micah twisted around a little so he could look up at her. "It's okay."  
  
She smiled down at him. "My little man."  
  
Micah pointed out the window. "Can we go to the comic store instead?"  
  
  
  
 **2\. Dream**  
  
His dad told him not to read them and he did anyway because, come on! He wasn't a baby. And so he'd got them all. _Tales from the Crypt_. _Vaults of Doom_. _9th Wonders!_ (Micah said it that way in his head, with the digit, not with words.) They were just comics. Stories. Stories never hurt anyone. (It was just pretend.)  
  
But things seemed more real with the lights out, with nothing left to hold the shadows at bay. He left the curtains open but the street lamps were too distant, too dim, too poorly place, too _something_. Everything reduced to fuzz and darkness, like sleeping in some half-formed dystopian ruin. (Zombies in the closet, rats over the bed, scrabbling in the crawl space.) Micah pulled his blankets tighter around him, buried his face in his pillow, eyes firmly closed. (It was just pretend. It was just pretend. It was okay because it was just pretend.)  
  
And he slept. (Eventually. Clock ticked three. Ticked four.) And he dreamed in the gutters between one panel day and the next. Night between the borders, in the interstitial spaces where static becomes motion, where the interpolation, the imagination takes place. (Comics had a secret too.) He dreamed of men who can fly but would not, of freedom and duty and war, puppet-masters and Renfields and all the pretty, deadly things, and the rot and the sweat and the sickly sweet stench, and of Uluru, mighty, mountainous, monstrous Uluru, Uluru the invincible. He dreamed of Uluru.  
  
"What have you done?" it asked him, asked them, over and over. "What have you **done**?"  
  
Micah didn't know.  
  
  
  
 **3\. Backdrop**  
  
Mom didn't take Hal's check -- Micah had stopped thinking of him as Grandpa at the first shout -- but she let him keep the laptop, so he reckoned he'd come out ahead. It took a while to get it right, to unchain it from all those stupid factory defaults, pare down all the dross and let it run free, but it was worth it. The laptop all but purred under his fingers, thrumming with potential. The only wireless network within reach was password secured and limited by mac address, but once he'd learned what that meant it was simple enough to get around it. It wasn't really stealing. Anyway he'd tricked the router into not reporting his bandwidth usage, so his neighbours limit wasn't affected.  
  
The internet was brilliant, especially when he could surf from home in the privacy of his own bedroom without other kids or teachers peering over his shoulder all the time. He wasted a few hours Googling himself and his parents, amazed at how much information you could find, ten minutes deciding the all-prevalent porn was just gross, and then, remembering his comics, found his way to the Uncle Burk's Fine Comics website and from there to the 9th Wonders! forums. There was a "no under 13s" thing on the forum, some government rule, but it didn't even try to check, so he just took five years away from when he was born for good measure and went with that.  
  
It worked great so long as he kept the talk to comics, or soccer, and a lot of the older posters all seemed to watch the same cartoons as him, so that worked out, and he had Google when he needed to bluff knowing movies and quotes and things. LOLCats were awesome, even if it took an effort not to type everything like that for a while after, and real life should definitely come with an ignore button. Plus there were spoilers and previews and the totally awesome cover to the upcoming issue nine and when he found out you could get a hidden bonus by IMing the artist's username (hidden in a panel in issue five) he didn't hesitate to find and download the chat software. Internet predators? Pfft. Gimme my wallpaper! An autoresponse link to his ping got him a Uluru of his own to grace his screen every time it came on. Brilliant!  
  
It was easy not to be afraid of monsters you saw every day, even if they were still dangerous.  
  
  
  
 **4\. Read**  
  
He wasn't really reading. He'd read the issue before, online, because he couldn't wait, and he'd bought it anyway because that was only fair and because there was something so much cooler about physical objects you could actually see and touch and smell. Not that new comics smelt exactly, but in principle. Full sensory experience. So he would read it, and again and again, no doubt, later. But right now, even though he was holding it up, legs swinging idly under the chair, all "here I am, well behaved child, reading happily, do not pay attention to me", he wasn't reading it at all. He was covertly watching his mom and his principle in the office, trying to hear them over the chatter of the receptionist and the murmur of the pumps in the fishtank, trying to lipread through the glass and wishing his mom wasn't sat with her back to him.  
  
Issue thirteen. Unlucky for some. Not that Micah was really blaming the comic for how he was about to get kicked out of school. Just one of those coincidental things. Brains looked for patterns. Like when you saw something once and then you saw it everywhere, in pictures and text and places and pools and people and just everywhere. It's not like it meant anything. Anyway, he'd only been here since the start of the school year. Not long enough to make real friends or anything. Just pretend. Just.  
  
Just for a second, he hated his mother. And his father. And the stupid comic book. And Isaac Mendez who he had never even met, who had made the comic he wasn't even reading, who, really, had nothing much at all to do with his life, and who he still hated, just because. Stupid artists. Stupid thirteen. Stupid school. Stupid money. Stupid stupid stupid.  
  
Which was all totally unfair, he knew. Fortunately, his mom trying to strangle the principle with the guy's own tie was a good distraction. He figured it was time to go and closed the comic, jumping to his feet, whispering an apology to the crumpled cover. He'd smooth it out later, maybe buy another if they could scrounge enough allowance together. It'd be okay, again. Anyway, he'd adjust. It wasn't really the comics fault, or anybodies. It was just one of those things.  
  
  
  
 **5\. Paint**  
  
Daniel Linderman dabbled in a particular form of antiquity dealing: he collected pieces of history in both directions. Events spread like ripples on a pond, intersecting over and over in complex patterns of aid and interference. In the depths of the past, he found the echoes of the future, the signposts of possibility left inked on scrolls, etched in stones, or painted on canvas by prophets and prognosticators, and he had them brought here to his own personal collection. The company held the larger body of the works, of course, a measure of trust -- or distrust, whichever you prefer -- but these...  
  
Aron carefully placed the Mendez canvas on the waiting easel. He reached up to take down the drop cloth, then paused and looked back for approval. Linderman stroked his beard, considering the hidden work. He had plans, and plans within plans. He had seen the signposts and he believed he could forge them into destiny. But every event was another stone in the pond. Another ripple, backwards and forwards. Confirm everything. Change everything. Which? Aron was staring at him, arms still raised, chubby face and beady eyes. Linderman nodded, and the other man eased the cloth away and let it fall.  
  
Buildings. Conflagration. The child.  
  
"This is the path, then." Linderman smiled, satisfied, reaching up to touch the painting, to touch the future. "Hello, Micah. You and I are going to do great things. Great things indeed."  
  
(What have you done?)


End file.
